The skinny

Ok, so course style, location and bunker technique have been decided - but what about the course itself?

How will it play - will it be long. short, penal, strategic? Well in my view designing a course for links (as far as playability is concerned) is really not that much different to designing a real course. Of course not everyone can carry the ball 280 yards like they can in links but there are options to turn down the distance settings in certain play modes to emulate your real life game and although I'm quite sure not many do that, the option is there nonetheless.

While were on the subject of Links and how it plays let me offer you my thoughts on that. As a professional golfer with some playing success (Sunderland of Scotland Masters champion with a 72 hole score of -17, British Club Professionals Champion and European PGA cup team member) I feel reasonably well qualified to give informed opinions on how realistic the various methods of play are and also offer some suggestions where things could have been better simulated.


Let me first go through the swing methods one by one.

Click - This has been the tried and tested formula for links over the years, click at the top of the gauge for required power and then click again at the bottom or 6 'o' clock, to determine the direction of the ball flight. This is by far the most popular method of play with 'pro' level click being the most used.

Good things about this method are that it simulates both the length of swing and indeed the quality of strike with the first click to determine power/shot length, ie: click too early before the 12 'o' clock and your ball will finish short of your intended target. It also simulates ball curve with draws, fades, hooks and slices possible if you miss the 6 'o' clock 'snap'. There is no possibility for a straight push or pull shot unless some other factor is involved ie: wind or slope. This therefore is it's limitation although it's a fun way to play.
Champ and elite click, are two of the most difficult modes of play from all the methods available as the directional penalties for missing the 'snap' can be severe.

Real Time swing - This was the much heralded real time vertical mouse swing used for the first time in a links game although other versions of the mouse swing had been used for many years previously in other golf sims. I have very mixed feelings about this swing method but ultimately cannot recommend it for realistic play due to it's one main drawback. Even at the very highest levels of champ and elite, it's far too easy to hit the ball straight, time after time with little variation. The only real challenge of this swing type is the length and timing of the swing to dictate the distance the ball travels.

Now I'm aware that not everyone will find it too easy to move the mouse back and forth in straight line, which is in effect what you must do to hit straight shot, but compared to the other methods of play, it's much too easy. I gave up on this method a short time after the game was released for this reason.
One of the main challenges of real golf is hitting the ball straight - the RTS mouse swing method simulates the directional aspect of play very poorly and in my opinion is one of the reasons why it was never taken up by the majority as the most popular method of play. It was a great opportunity lost by the dev team and indeed there have been no more version of links since that point. Who knows - it may have been a contributing factor. If you want to see a great mouse swing in practice, check out PGA Golf 2000 by Sierra Sports. Sure the graphics may be dated and the ball physics and other options may not compare to Links but it does have an awesome mouse swing. You can still find the game on ebay.

Powerstroke - This was the first method of mouse swing that was used in Links and is probably the most realistic way of playing the game. It simulates distance control through length and speed of the horizontal only mouse swing. It also simulates not only directional control, by simulating the swing path and contact area of the clubface via the direction and accuracy of the mouse swing, but also the club face angle at the moment of impact via a mouse click as the clubhead travels through the impact area. This means that straight pushes and pulls and indeed, all manner of bad shots can be played - just like real golf!
This method of play is quite tricky to get to grips with and most don't persevere and stick with the easier pro click method instead.
Drawbacks are that it doesn't have a real time swing option along with the golfer animation and has no vertical mouse swing option either. If a form of this swing had been made to work in real time and much tweaking and testing had been done to get the difficulty levels to compare with the click methods of play - this could have been a winner. I'd recommend this mode of play for someone who wants the most realistic simulation of golf in links.

What method do I use? pro click, champ click and champ powerstroke depending on my mood and what kind of experience I'm looking for. I'll get onto some of the other aspects of realism in Links in a later blog.


So why am I going into such detail about these different methods of play and how they affect realism and the golf simulation? Well, what's the point of creating a realistic course if it can't be played like a real course?
Thankfully, even though certain methods of play have their drawbacks, Links has enough going for it with it's ball and terrain physics and also the choice of all these methods of virtual swing, that it is possible to get a really good simulation of golf on the home computer.

As any good real life professional sportsman will tell you, at some point after many thousands of hours of practice, the sporting movement (be it a kick or a throw or a swing) becomes almost automatic and an unthinking motion. The thought processes you have when playing real sports and how pressure affects your body has a huge impact on your performance at this level and in these ways, although it's much easier to learn the actions of a click or a swing on your mouse, Links brings the feeling of playing real golf.
I've made my fair share of double bogeys down the last hole in Links purely because the self inflicted pressure of beating my best score or beating my opponent caused my body or my brain to seize up.

So at this point, lets get back to the course and what kind of experience people will want to have while playing it. To get to the core of this we have to try and understand why people play golf and simulated golf in the first place?

Maybe it's because it makes them feel things. I'll repeat that - because it makes them feel things. This is important. The great majority of things people do with their leisure time are done so they can feel a certain way.
Sports and games often intensify your normal feelings and I think that this is why sporting pastimes are so popular. I remember a quote I heard a while back which said something like 'You may know someone for many years but you will never truly know them until you have played 18 holes of golf with them. At that point their character is laid bare for all to see'
It's true you run through more emotions on a golf course than you might run through in weeks of normal living and learning to cope and revel in that is one of the big attractions of the sport.

When you're a raw beginner you surely do feel a lot of frustration and disapointment with your ineptitude for the game, but all it takes is one good shot to give you satisfaction and more importantly, hope for the future!
It's important to understand how the game makes people feel if you're going to design a golf course that people will first of all enjoy playing and secondly will want to play again and again and again. For people to enjoy playing your course they have to feel challenged, stimulated, they need a little bit of success here and there and they have to enjoy their surroundings.

So the course has to be long enough and difficult enough to provide the challenge for as many different levels of play as possible, it also need to have variety to keep the player interested and his brain stimulated.
One trick I like to use is that some holes and shots will look fairly straightforward but in reality are much more difficult than they look at first glance. This can take the form of elevation changes making clubing difficult and fairway and green slopes taking a ball away from the hole. Conversly you can face a shot that looks like your worst nightmare but in reality it's much easier to pull off than it looks. This might take the shape of a spectacular obstacle like a big bunker, ravine or perhaps just bushes and deep grass directly in the line of play. To carry over such an obstacle might in reality be an easy task but it does add to the feeling of enjoyment and satisfaction when the hazard is cleared.

This is a pic from the first hole showing how an angled fairway and a diagonal bunker which can be easily carried, can make the tee shot look much harder than it actually is.